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At the age of 5, Richard Williams visited a movie theater in Toronto with his mother and saw ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.'' ''She said I was never the same again,'' recalled Mr. Williams with a laugh. ''It just knocked me out. I said 'That's what I want to do; that's what I have to do.' ''

As the director of animation for the critically acclaimed and technically dazzling film ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit,'' the 55-year-old Mr. Williams is credited, along with the director Robert Zemeckis, with breaking new ground in the art of integrating actors with cartoon characters. Animated films, Mr. Williams says, will never be quite the same again.

''Roger Rabbit'' was, Mr. Williams said in an interview in his north London studio, a grueling, often round-the-clock project involving at least 320 people working on animation, mostly in London, including two of his four children who worked as part of the technical crew. Nearly two million drawings were made to complete the film -sometimes a single frame required two dozen drawings - and it took as long as two weeks and more than 1,400 drawings to create one 10-second scene.

What gives the film resonance is a plot that merges the detective movies and cartoons of the 1940's with the sensibility of the 1980's. ''It's 40's cartoons with 80's angst,'' said Mr. Williams. ''It's film noir, sort of Humphrey Bogart and 'Chinatown.' '' Ultimate Fantasy

''It's the ultimate male fantasy, drawn by a cartoonist,'' said Mr. Williams. ''I tried to make her like Rita Hayworth; we took her hair from Veronica Lake, and Zemeckis kept saying, 'What about the look Lauren Bacall had?' ''

Perhaps the most inventive element of the $45 million film, which was a collaboration between the Walt Disney Company and Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, is that, after several minutes, the cartoon characters somehow seem real and the live actors resemble cartoons.

Ironically, Mr. Williams had to be persuaded to take on ''Roger Rabbit.'' He was a successful animator of television commercials, with credits including an award-winning British cartoon short, ''The Little Island,'' and an animated version of Dickens's ''Christmas Carol'' that had won an Oscar. He had also won acclaim for his animation of the opening credits in the ''Pink Panther'' movies. First Response Negative

Yet it was Mr. Williams's half-completed 23-year-old ''obsession'' - a full-length animated feature called ''The Thief and the Cobbler,'' loosely based on the ''Arabian Nights'' -that brought him to the attention of Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Zemeckis.

After seeing portions of that film, Mr. Zemeckis, who also directed ''Back to the Future,'' and Mr. Spielberg met Mr. Williams at the St. James Club in London and essentially offered him the job.

''I said I just hate animation and live action together; it just doesn't work, it's ugly,'' Mr. Williams recalled. ''I said I hated 'Mary Poppins.' Even though it's beautifully animated, the illusion doesn't work. You didn't suspend your belief for the animation.

''But then Zemeckis began acting out the opening of the movie. And I thought if I could remove all the inhibitions, all the rules that you're supposed to follow in blending animation and live action, then maybe this could work.'' All Figured Out in 90 Minutes

''These guys were very smart - it was like playing fastball,'' Mr. Williams said. ''Spielberg came in late, listened, took off his dark glasses and said, 'Yeah, when the rabbit sits down, let's have real dust coming up. The rabbit could have a real coffee cup rattling.'' And then Zemeckis said, 'Yeah, and the detective could have a cartoon coffee cup.' By the end of an hour and a half we had the whole thing figured out.''

The film makers agreed not to be bound by old rules governing the use of animation and live action. For example, live-action cameras were traditionally kept locked in one position because it was difficult for cartoonists to link their drawings to the live action.

''I said, 'Let's move the camera; let's move it all the time.' It was more work, but it made the illusion work,'' Mr. Williams said. ''It was like those 40's movies.''

In the past, too, cartoon characters and actors rarely interacted physically, also because of the technical difficulties. ''We knew our characters had to interact,'' said Mr. Williams. ''Laurel and Hardy are funny because they're in each other's coats, hair, eyes. They're physically pulling on each other. The rabbit and the detective had to be tangled up.'' Shadows and Light

Mr. Williams also saw to it that the cartoon characters were shaded, colored and lighted to give them a three-dimensional quality. The cartoon figures - as well as the actors - are not only brightly lighted but give off shadows, making them realistic but creating laborious technical difficulties for the animators.

As the technical crew drew the cartoon figures, the actors recited dialogue and performed against blank space that was ultimately filled in by the animators. The ''eye lines'' between the 'live' actors and the cartoon characters was perhaps the most complicated task. ''There are things we didn't quite get right,'' said Mr. Williams. ''The rabbit was supposed to be three feet high. At one point Bob Hoskins was looking at a four-foot-high rabbit. The only thing we could think of was to put the rabbit up on his feet and stand him against a wall.''

At first, Mr. Williams said, ''Hollywood-handsome leading men,'' such as Paul Newman and Harrison Ford, had been sought for the role. But Mr. Hoskins, a short, balding British actor, was given the part after testing for it. ''We fell over when we saw his test,'' said Mr. Williams. ''The guy had amazing concentration. It was as if the rabbit was there. Bob was perfect.''